A move to getting 'right' on clean energy?

Laylan Copelin | Austin American-Statesman | October 4, 2014

In what passes for public debate on energy, it’s sometimes easy to believe that conservatives are the fossils in fossil fuels and that liberals are loonies leading us to an unreliable future where the sun never sets and the wind always blows.

That can be the view, at least, if you are watching too much cable “news.”

If you get out, as I did last month, and actually talk to some conservatives and liberals, you can end up breaking some stereotypes.

I was attracted to two clean energy events hosted the same week — one by a vanguard of conservatives and Tea Party types, the other populated by some of Austin’s finest liberals.

I expected to encounter dueling positions over “clean” energy. Instead, what I heard was some common interest on topics ranging from the environment to rooftop solar to taxes.

It was radical.

End subsidies for all energy. Tax pollution. Innovate. Encourage partnerships with groups like the Sierra Club.

And that was the message from the conservatives.

My head was spinning like a wind turbine.

Now for the caveat.

There were fewer than 100 conservatives at the State Theater event in downtown Austin. (I think Rick Perry has more lawyers than that.)

And this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill, drill-baby-drill message that’s an easy sell in a 30-second political ad.

• Debbie Dooley, founder of the Atlanta Tea Party and the Green Tea Party, which partners with the Sierra Club on environmental issues. She also is fighting “monopoly utilities” that don’t want rooftop solar to spread over Georgia like morning dew.

To Dooley, rooftop solar is a freedom issue: I’ll give you my solar panel when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

• Bob Inglis, a former South Carolina congressman who continues his message on energy and climate issues from a Virginia think tank after the Tea Party kicked him out of office in 2010.

Truth is, Austin can celebrate its clean energy leadership role all it wants, but until attitudes change at the Capitol, any gains remain local.

Averitt insists it can happen.

“Thirty years ago, if you were concerned about the environment, you were a communist and couldn’t get elected,” Averitt said. “Today, if you’re not concerned about the environment, you are a goober and can’t get elected.”